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Explosions and exclamations!!!!!

On Feb 15th (2nd day of Lunar Festival), Hong Kong showcased its annual Chinese New Year fireworks at Victoria Harbour. I watched it from the Avenue of Stars on the Kowloon side, so Hong Kong Island formed the background. Sadly it was freezing cold that day, and rainy to boot, which dampened (pun very much intended) the mood. We arrived at 6:30, an hour and a half early, yet the entire first row was already filled up. Many of these people had their DSLRs set up with tripods, and I imagine they had already been waiting at least half an hour already.

I nearly got stabbed by an umbrella at least five times.

We managed to wedge ourselves in a spot in the middle area behind 2-3 rows of other people. What I found most annoying were people who were determined to keep their umbrellas open. Not only does it block the view for EVERYONE, I had to keep a lookout to make sure I didn’t randomly get whacked in the head.

Once the show started, though, most people were nice enough to stow away their umbrellas (it wasn’t that rainy anyways). This only left the jerks who raised their tripods so high, their chunky SLRs kept making cameos in the corner of our own shots.

Other than these minor annoyances, the show was enjoyable.

I think that you may actually prefer seeing some fireworks photos, instead of reading a thousand-word paragraph of me describing them for you. Just a warning that the following is going to be very graphics- and exclamation mark-intensive.

The firecrackers are set off from 3 boats floating in the harbour.

Fish!

Tiger faces!

Golden nuggets!

There was background music but it was really tinny from where we were.

Looks like they are floating stars!

Reminds me of aurora borealis.

Flowers!

Sakura!

Lotus flowers!

Firework fountains!

The red part should be Chinese characters but I couldn't make out what they were.

HK Island makes an amazing backdrop.

Smileys!! :)

Retinas burning yet?

Random exclamation marks!!!!!

Pink fluffs!

Wrapping things up... HK style.

In total the show lasted around 20 minutes. The photos don’t do it justice; you’d need to see it live and it will leave you gaping.

Exiting the premises was next to impossible; we tried to go one way, and a security guard informed us it would actually take about an hour for the crowd to clear out. By then we were really cold and hungry, so we turned around and tried to get out from the other side. It wasn’t much better.

Shovefest 2010

At times the crowd was literally at a standstill. It took us a good 15 minutes or so, but we made it out, and headed to Mong Kok for a belated dinner. We ate at this corner restaurant that was known for their fried dumplings/potstickers. I had 2 orders of these, and I could see (taste?) why it’s so popular. But of course, being generous restaurant owners, they welcomed the New Year and patrons by tacking on an extra $2 to every food order.

Eventually we wandered to an arcade underneath a shopping centre, and spent a few hours in there. They didn’t allow photo-taking inside, so I can’t post some of the weird and wonderful stuff it had. I had never seen an arcade so sprawling (2-3 times larger than the one in P-Mall), and it was open 24 hours. Similar to clubs, smoking is prohibited but people do it anyways. So I ended up smelling like cigarettes by the time we left.

Anyways, hope I didn’t kill all of your bandwidth with this post. I would’ve posted a video too but it’s 3AM right now and I’m just lazy. Also, my reading week unofficially begins now, as I will be leaving for Thailand in mere hours. Bedtime!